


Rerouting

by vass



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Epistolary, Gen, Imperialism, Skaaiat Means Well, ro2sid exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 10:04:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18569170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: Daos Ceit comes to Athoek.





	Rerouting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gardenvarietyunique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardenvarietyunique/gifts).



> This is my exchange piece for gardenvarietyunique, two of whose prompts were "Awn and Basnaaid either talking together or one reflecting on the other" or "wild card! make up your own prompt".

Dear Skaaiat,

I am well, and hope you are likewise. I am on Athoek Station now, and very glad of the change of scenery after a month on Sword of Init. I'm working for the temple, processing contracts, but it's a temporary assignment until something better suiting my skills becomes available.

Athoek Station was famous for its gardens before it became the capital of the AI republic. They're still lovely. I take my lunch there and sit by the pond and watch the fish.

Today I saw some old acquaintances there, Fleet Captain Breq and Lieutenant Seivarden. They were sitting over on the other side of the pond, very close together, and Lieutenant Seivarden was leaning her head on Fleet Captain Breq's shoulder.

I checked their jackets, when I got the chance. No new pins as far as I could tell, but I wasn't very nearby.

I would have walked closer and paid my respects (I'm not afraid to talk to the Fleet Captain! Don't laugh!), but some person claiming to be your cousin Ekanat walked up to me then and asked to be remembered to you, and when I turned around again they'd left the pond. And now I've duly filed the report with you, and you can ignore it as you did many similar reports in my time assisting you. Or in the event that you want to encourage her, I'll properly pass your message on.

She must have looked at my pins and then asked Station, the same as anyone would. Station doesn't seem any less amenable to that sort of request, despite no longer being compelled.

Have you guessed yet what confuses me most? It's that Station isn't Omaugh Palace Station any more. Athoek Station has the same voice, and there are standard station architecture features, and similar materials in doors and elevators, and every now and then I get lulled into thinking I'm back... home, I suppose. The first home I had after leaving Ors. And then Station will say something Omaugh Palace Station would never have said, or I'll turn around and see people without gloves, and know I'm somewhere else entirely.

In all propriety,

Ceit

Dear Skaaiat,

I am safe and well, and hope you are likewise. The station administrator's daughter, Piat, has invited me to tea with her and some friends. Maybe Station told her I'd met the fleet captain before. She's twenty, and looks like the ingenue from an entertainment. Her mother is famously beautiful and everyone's in love with her.

I'll finish this letter after I come back.

Here I am again. The tea was very good. The conversation was strange, the way it always is when you're the new one. There were a couple of other new people too, but mostly it was Piat and her established group.

Piat's friends are mostly young desk pilots her own age, or the daughters of higher level administrators, except one of them is Tisarwat Kinar from Omaugh Palace Station, who shipped out with Mercy of Kalr as its third lieutenant.

Except that it isn't her. I remember Tisarwat, though not well. No one could forget those eyes. And I could have gotten to know her better, but I never bothered because we didn't have anything in common. But I did talk to her a few times back then, and this is not the same person. It's as if someone cloned that Tisarwat, and raised her completely differently from birth on.

She's very intimidating, except that every now and then she reminds you that she's still nineteen. She has a horrible crush on Horticulturist Basnaaid.

Which reminds me that I haven't told you about that. You never told me what happened when you met her, dear, but I can figure out a rhyme scheme if it's in a simple mode. You wanted to offer her clientage, didn't you, and you never did know what to do when someone refuses you.

I hadn't planned to intrude on the horticulturist's notice any time soon. I couldn't avoid her forever, of course, but I was in no hurry. What could I say? "Your dead sister annexed my village, and I think we both refused the same would-be patron?" But when Tisarwat found out I was from Ors she dragged me along to meet Basnaaid as an obvious pretext to visit her.

She sized me up in about a second and decided I was probably harmless, and then she saw my Awer badge and looked like she'd bitten into a lemon. I guess if it was that bad when she met you, it explains why you rushed home to Omaugh Palace and offered me a contract again. I don't think I'll be getting any invitations to tea from her.

All propriety,

Ceit.

Dear Skaaiat,

Guess who invited me to tea?

*

Tea was in Horticulturist Basnaaid's office, which was mostly taken up by growing lights and potting soil and cuttings and gardening tools. The only thing not coated in a fine layer of potting soil was a small side table for the tea things.

Ceit watched the horticulturist as closely as she could without appearing to stare, trying to see a trace of her sister. She was forced to conclude that she couldn't properly remember what Lieutenant Awn looked like, and she had no idea she'd forgotten that.

Basnaaid poured the tea and made polite conversation about the journey and how Ceit was finding Athoek. This did not set Ceit at her ease. Perhaps it was not intended to. The etiquette felt pointed. Or... no, guarded.

After some minutes of this, she gestured to the Awer badge Ceit wore. "You are a ward of Awer house?"  
"Yes. Of Samaain Awer's branch."  
She could see that Basnaaid did not know the name.  
"Her second daughter generously took me with her when she left the planet of my birth, and prevailed upon Lord Awer to fund my education until I was ready to sit the Aptitudes."

Ceit had summed her childhood up this way for years now, and could tell a lot about a person's upbringing, social status, and planet of origin by whether they responded to this account with pity or enthusiasm. Basnaaid was diplomatically neutral, and Ceit reflected that Athoek was not the planet where Basnaaid's own family lived, and that the Aptitudes tended to take into account whether a citizen would wish to live closer to family than three gates away.

Ceit decided to spot her a counter. "That same Awer offered me clientage when I turned seventeen, in memory of someone she loved. I refused. She told me once that she'd made you the same offer."  
Basnaaid cracked an expression. It was anger, not unexpectedly. "Then Skaaiat Awer did send you," she said.  
"She didn't send me," Ceit said. "I left. She's still thinks there's benefit in having the ear of the Lord of the Radch. One of them. She says she doesn't know what will happen to the citizens and AIs who can't leave if everyone who cares defects or flees." Also Skaaiat still had the considerable power and intelligence available to an Inspector Supervisor. If Ceit knew that Skaaiat was doing what she could to prop up Awer's position in the new state coalescing around Omaugh System, Skaaiat was also using the docks to help refugees to escape. And even her loyalty to her own house... for thousands of years Awer had been considered a defender of justice for all citizens, and not only by itself. Would Ceit find that at all persuasive if Skaaiat's mother hadn't agreed to house her and fund her education, or if Skaaiat herself (officially, the Aptitudes) had not found a place for her as a dock inspector? She'd considered this for a while now, and the only conclusion she'd found was that she wanted to find out who she was without them.

Aloud, Ceit said "The Lord of the Radch is at war with herself. I was born in the immediate aftermath of my planet's annexation. I don't want to watch close up as she tries to annex herself."  
Basnaaid laughed: a strangled, incredulous sound. "And so you came here? To the only government she wants to destroy more than her own?"  
Ceit spread her hands. "If I've not safe anywhere, I'd rather it was somewhere that successfully defied her recently."  
Basnaaid took a deep breath. "What about Skaaiat, then? Do you think she'll come here too?"  
"I don't know," Ceit said, spreading her hands again. "I hope she will. I consider her a friend, and I don't think her influence will change Lord Mianaai's mind."

Basnaaid took a long breath. "Why did you refuse her offer?" she asked.  
Ceit ran her finger along the rim of her tea bowl. "Why did you?" she asked. It was not an entirely proper question; but then, Basnaaid had asked her first.

"I didn't want to. You're not her client, and Awer's house lord either didn't offer you adoption or you didn't accept it. Yet you still wear that." The affinity badge. Proclaiming her connection to Awer in platinum and pearl for all of civilization -- and, now, beyond -- to see. Ceit inclined her head.

"I am thankful for what Awer's done for me, and my association with Skaaiat. I am happy to acknowledge them. That doesn't mean I want to step into... into another role in the entertainment." It was one of two pins Ceit had always worn. The other she'd removed before boarding Sword of Init's second shuttle, which the ship had "lost" just shy of the marker buoy where a Republic ship had happened on them "by chance" them not long after. Her collar felt bare without it.

There had been a social advantage to wearing the flower pin in the Radch. It marked her as a proper, obedient Radchaai citizen, not something she wished to be thought of as in the Republic. If the occasion it commemorated for her was not the honor of personally serving the Lord of the Radch as flower-bearer, but the execution of eighty-three Orsian people, the most violent event that had taken place there within Ceit's lifetime, then no one but Skaaiat could infer that. Most mourning pins were not in that design, after all.

*

She never asked me about her sister. If Tisarwat hadn't told her I was Orsian she might never have realized I knew Lieutenant Awn. I hope she doesn't tell everyone. I've been warned that Administrator Celar collects "authentic folk music", and I don't think she'll give me tamarind sweets for singing one she hasn't heard before. But then, I still haven't met the administrator: maybe I'll fall in love with her like everyone else here.

It turned out Horticulturist Basnaaid had invited me to tea to give me a chance to importune her on your behalf in private. When I didn't, she asked me about why I came here. It was not an easy conversation, although Ikkt knows I've had enough practice explaining it to you and your Station and my new Station and the ship I came on and everyone since who's asked.

Of course I'm still very grateful for the chance. I'm just tired and maudlin after thinking about those days. She gave me a potted plant. With orange flowers, my favorite. I've put it in a little hanging basket and tied it to my bunk so I can see it when I sleep. My upper neighbor has shown me where to find painted curtains to create some privacy, so my new quarters are coming together nicely. And there isn't a food shortage, that was propaganda. The same neighbor is helping me practice after my Xhai lessons. It's very different from Lasu and Min'su, and of course I don't have time to study it as intensively as I did the Official Language, but most people are very kind about it.

I keep thinking of the lieutenant. Of what you told me about her and the fleet captain, of how much of my own life she's shaped. Will you forgive me, dear, if I'm a little angry about that? If she hadn't, if none of you had ever come to Shis'urna, I probably would have lived my whole life in Ors. I might have joined the priesthood, or become a fisher like Grandmother. My life would have been defined by all those people around me and the pattern our individual casts made taken together. I wouldn't have used that metaphor, either. The Lord of the Radch took that away from all of us, and I like the world you gave me an entry to, the life I've made and am making again. But if it is my life, not our lives, my family's and city's lives, then why does it still revolve so much around another person who died when I was only four? It is what it is, a Radchaai would say. But that's not an Ikktian philosophy -- or wasn't, twenty-eight years ago.

Enough of that for now. Let me tell you about the new assignment I'm starting soon...


End file.
